


The Final Fate of Bootstrap Bill

by ChristinaK



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: AU, Gen, Ghosts, POV First Person, non-canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 06:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2721581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChristinaK/pseuds/ChristinaK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being the various and sundrie possibilities regarding the unnatural demise of William Turner, otherwise known as the pirate Bootstrap Bill.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <i>Did I ever tell you fellows about the final fate of Bootstrap Bill? No?</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>No, no, he didn't end up on the bottom of the ocean for all time, squashed like an over-ripe melon. That's disgusting. Who told you that? Liars, they are. Whoever said that didn't know Bootstrap Bill. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Captain Jack Sparrow Remix

**Author's Note:**

> First published in July 2003 and August 2005 on livejournal.

Barkeep! Another rum!

What d'you mean, where's the gold? S'right where you put it when I laid it down before... Oh, you want _more_ gold for another pint.... Bloody unreasonable lot, you are.... Did anyone ever tell you it's a sin to be avaricious? You could go to Hell's third circle for that. Or maybe it was the sixth.... Ruddy land pirates with their rum.... Hmm.

Did I ever tell you fellows about the final fate of Bootstrap Bill? No?

No, no, he didn't end up on the bottom of the ocean for all time, squashed like an over-ripe melon. That's disgusting. Who told you that? Liars, they are. Whoever said that didn't know Bootstrap Bill.

Yes, I could tell you. But I seem to be suffering from a perishing thirst....

Ah, that's more like it. Lovely.... Right. So.

You had the first part of the story a'right: Bootstrap Bill (splendid fellow, true friend, and a snappy dresser, I might add) was sent to Davy Jones's locker by the crew of the Black Pearl, weighted down with a two-ton cannon and a hundred-foot of chain. Dreadful. All for being loyal to his old captain, trying to do right by him, speaking up for the--

Well, he did. Just trying to tell you what he was like. Give you a fair picture of his sterling character. Heroic, y'see.

In any event. Down he went, straight to the floor of deepest part of the darkest sea, dragged down until he reached bottom, caught too tight to wriggle off the hook of that bastard Barbossa's trap. But being accursed, o' course it didn't kill him. Just inconvenienced him a bit. It was cold down there, and very nasty, with little glowing worms that swam through his skull. A weaker man would've expired from the shock. But being a pirate of stout heart, Bill immediately went to work trying to get free.

He'd wrench the chain this way-- ngggh! And that-a-way-- uugggh!

(Oh, sorry, didn't mean to spill that. Barkeep! Another rum for my friend over here!) 

And up and down! And round and through!

And... it didn't do him a bloody bit of good. Good chains they make to hold down cannons, let me tell you. Thick. Sturdy. Deadly heavy.

Not that it discouraged old Bill. No, he was the type of man to pull like a camel until doomsday--

Why not a camel?

Well, I'm sure they're better workers than donkeys. Donkeys are stupid. And bloody-minded. And not particularly bright. I could tell you stories about donkeys, but....

Do you want to hear this tale, or don't you?

Right. So-- un-discouraged, Bill labored to free himself with every fiber of his half-dead body, but it didn't do him a bit of good. He'd still be down there, straining at those chains-- or possibly squashed like a stranded jellyfish-- if it hadn't been for the shark.

The shark that ate him, a'course.

It did, I say. Gobbled him up, and the cannon too. They'll eat anything, sharks will. Fish, boats, anchors, goats, men, cannons, swords. All the same to them, they're the devourers of the oceans. You'd know that, if you ever met one. But then if you ever met one, we prob'ly wouldn't be **having** this conversation....

So, this hungry beast, scouring the bottom of the seas for glow worms, comes upon Bill, helpless, hapless, chained up, a fine meal that couldn't even try to flee, and in three bites, it swallows him down, and swims on its merry way.

What?

No, he did not meet Jonah. This is a _true tale_. That's a Bible story. What d'you mean, what's the difference? If you have to ask, you shouldn't be serving drinks in this bar, sir....

No. No. Well, his arm did come off. He had to re-attach it once he was inside the belly of the monster. One of the bites took him through the shoulder.

I told you, he was accursed. Are you paying attention at all?

The stomach of a shark is a tight fit, rather like a coffin, I'm told. Close and dark and hot, with vicious liquids eating away at him every moment, trying to make him into food. Very unpleasant. Not the kind of thing Bill found amusing.

But fortunately, in being eaten, the cannon and chains came loose, and Bill was no longer obliged to cart them along. Almost like marrying a woman with six children, a mother-in-law, and three maiden aunts to support; you can imagine Bill's relief at being rid of it. The only problem then facing him was getting out of the belly of the shark.

He tried hacking his way out with a small knife the shark had eaten previously, but the hide of a Great White is tougher than a taxman's scruples, and twice as thick as a pikeman's head. No joy there.

He tried crawling up the throat of the shark, but 'twas slicker than any iceberg face, and the teeth at the end were still chewing and chomping their way through the sea.

I suppose he'd still be sailing around the world inside the shark, if it hadn't been for the storm. It was a wild, desperate, savage hurricane; wet, with waves that reached ten feet high; wet, with a fury like Poseidon's trident; wet, like--

Ah, thank'ye. Yes, that does hit the spot....

Right. Savage, wet, furious -- and this disaster smashed the shark onto the coral reefs of Hispaniola, ripping it to shreds, tearing it to pieces, and leaving the beast to finally float ashore in bits of bloody flesh and bone, Bill floating along with it.

He finally made landfall down the coastline from Port-aux-Prince, grateful to be free but rather confused as to location and locale, and utterly exhausted besides. I b'lieve if he hadn't been so turned around, he never would have made the terrible mistake of falling asleep in the graveyard.

Hmm? Well, y'see, the local witch doctors and their congregation were in the habit of using that graveyard for their rituals.

Vodou. Deep magic. Chanting and dancing, sacrifices and zombies and such. Not to be trifled with, my friends, not on your life. Bill already had one curse hanging over his head; if he'd known whose graveyard he'd collapsed in, he'd never have let himself stop until he was far, far away.

But collapse he did, right on the sepulcher favored for rituals of the vodou priestess. He was so knackered, he slept right through the first part of the ceremony that night, with the lighting of candles and drawing of circles with salt and rum. The priestess thought he was a dead man, of course, left to rot there by the local rum runners, and she wasn't best pleased, but she didn't think much of it. Just made a note to get them back with a few curses, she did, and went on with the mass.

Until Bill woke up during the invocation of Samedi, and in his fear and surprise jumped up on top of the nearest cross.

You have to _understand_... Baron Samedi is s'posed to be a skeleton. Dancer at the crossroads. One of the vodou loa. Not to be taken lightly.

And of course, in the moonlight, Bill was... what he was.

The obvious conclusions were drawn.

And so Bill spent an entertaining month accepting the sacrifices to the loa, the rum and flour and salt and candles, and avoiding the slaughtered chickens as best he could. He couldn't appreciate them proper, as he was undead, unable to eat or drink, but it passed the time. You'd be ready for a party too, if you'd just escaped from a shark's belly. He danced with the faithful, and howled at the moon, and slept off the celebrations in the nearest crypt during the daylight hours.

P'raps he shouldn't have let himself get complacent, because when one of the ritual invocations of the spirits went wrong, the priestess became suspicious. 

The spirts, the loa, the _spirits _.... speaking of spirits...__

__Ahhhhh. Yes. Thank ye, sir, that's extremely kind of you._ _

__As I was saying: the spirits were angry, or so the priestess judged. You want to be avoiding the judgments of women with supernatural resources, you truly do. She was much wroth--_ _

__Wroth. **Wroth**. Raging and frothing and wickedly displeased, if you must know. May I continue?_ _

___Thank_ you._ _

__So she decided to confront Baron Samedi at the next mass. She demanded to know why the parishioners were still sickening from fever; she inquired as to the cursing of one man's pigs; she requested that Baron Samedi explain why he never ate the chickens._ _

__Bill, alas, didn't have an answer for that last one._ _

__The results weren't pretty, my friends, not pretty a'tall. A walking corpse which has been incinerated is still a walking corpse, but it's a much _ashier_ corpse, if you see what I mean. The wind whistles through its bones ever so much more effectively when the last bits of flesh have been burned away._ _

__Come daylight, Bill was as recovered as he was going to get, and he decided not to push his luck. He stole a small sketch, and decided the time had come to leave Hispaniola._ _

__Now, if you remember back at the beginning, Bill was trying to avoid his former wretched crewmates from the Black Pearl. He decided to head west, for the coast of Mexico, and hide among the Dons. Surely the Black Pearl wouldn't attack there, and risk the full rage of the Spanish Navy._ _

__A cunning plan, don't you agree? Yes?_ _

__Pity Bill never did have much luck with navigation.... but that's what happens when you steal a boat but forget to steal a compass._ _

__Where did he end up? Interesting you should ask that.... Florida. Rather an abandoned little spot. Peaceful. Quiet. Nothing in particular to recommend it. He settled in just outside of a small coastal town on the Gulf, and attempted to keep a low profile._ _

__Time passed, as time does, and Bootstrap Bill lived on, as wretched and blessed as any undead happy-to-not-be-drowned pirate could. He explored, he swam. Did a little beach-combing. Always hoping not to encounter the Black Pearl._ _

__And then one day...._ _

__Well, he was wandering through the local everglades. And he stops to take a drink of water._ _

__And suddenly, the curse of un-life is lifted! Instantaneously! Effortlessly! Immediately!_ _

__Surely, Bill thought, this is the Fountain of Youth and Immortality, that ol' Ponce deLeon was forever questing off for. Because what else could cure him, if not the lifting of the curse from the Aztec Gold? And he knew _that_ was impossible; he'd sent a piece of gold to England, to keep the curse alive. So Barbossa and the crew, as well as himself, were never getting free._ _

__So he built a bar there--_ _

__No, I am not making this up! He did! You can even go there, if you want._ _

__Six miles north of San Miguel, there's a little inlet on the water, and a bamboo hut where Bill supplies the rum, along with pints of clear, cold water that taste better than anything you've ever had. And that's where he's been, ever since. And that, my friends, is the final fate of Bootstrap Bill._ _

__Stop by there, tell him Jack sent you._ _

__... ah, yes, and thank you again for the rum, my friends. A storyteller always appreciates the _tangible_ expression of his audience's satisfaction...._ _

__Hmm? What's that you say?_ _

__I did not._ _

__I did not! I told it completely correctly, with all the details in, and some of them very nicely embellished..._ _

__If you think _you_ could tell it better, then why don't you? Because you know how stupid it would sound coming out of your mouth._ _

__Spare me. There's got to be a bar somewhere in Florida with a bartender who knows a Jack. If they go looking, they'll find one eventually._ _

__Oh, they'd never have b'lieved me if I'd said you were tending bar here in Tortuga._ _

__Because it's **ludicrous** , that's why._ _

__If you don't understand why, I'm not going to explain it to you. Now, about that rum...._ _


	2. Moonlight and Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will has a realization. Elizabeth has some comfort to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blame this on Dee, who clarified a few things about the movie that I was too caught in the action to really process completely at the time. Not to mention those ideas being creepifying. Actually written before Chapter 1, back in 2003. And again, not compliant past the first movie.

Looking out the casement of their new bedroom, Will watched the water far below their new home slapping gently against the shore, rocking the boats in the harbor like so many cradles, gentle and persistent. Listened to the dull shush-and-roll of the surf, and closed his eyes against the images which had awakened him.

"Come back to bed, Will. It's too cold for stargazing."

He turned his head to his wife, and smiled slightly. "I'll be there in a moment, love. Keep the sheets warm for me?"

Pale hands reflected the moonlight, pulled him close, and he couldn't hide a shudder, remembering his nightmare. Elizabeth leaned against him, her chin on his shoulder, her eyes narrowing as he avoided her gaze. "You're shaking. What's troubling you? Can't you tell me?"

He swallowed, tried to force a smile again, failed miserably. Wrapped his arms around his wife, his love, feeling warm human flesh solid and heavy against him, not threadbare and starving-thin. His eyes didn't leave the ocean. "I don't want you to share my irrational fears. It's pointless, there's nothing to be done...."

"We've already shared one nightmare. I hope you know I'm not afraid to face another for you." She kissed him softly on the cheek, then stroked his jaw, and he placed a kiss on her palm as it slid past his lips. "Tell me."

Will leaned his head against the windowpane, eyelids drooping as he studied the town laid out below them, barely visible but for the lamp-lights at the docks, the glint of light on the water. "I dreamed-- I dreamed of my father." He pulled Elizabeth closer, her reality anchoring him, keeping him from wondering if he were still in a dream. "I hadn't thought of it when they told me; I was so angry it didn't register. The crew said they killed him, but of course... he was like them. Cursed. Half-alive." He shook his head, feeling dry and bony fingers again, as in his dream. _Give us a hug, Will m'boy, it's been too long...._ "A thousand feet down, fathoms deep, and he couldn't die, couldn't escape, chained to a cannon in the dark and the cold, and..."

"Will," his wife whispered, her arms tightening around him. "Don't. Don't do this."

"I can't help it. I can't seem to stop." The ocean was mild tonight, playful, not the fury it could be, not the danger that they both knew it truly was. And somewhere out there, in some uncharted depth, his father had been eternally dying and forever trapped, crushed by a hundred-weight of water, abandoned to the empty vastness of Davy Jones's locker. 

"I wish I'd killed Barbossa myself. I wished he'd suffered longer for that. How many years was my father down there alone before he went mad? How long before he wrenched himself to pieces trying to get away?" Will buried his face in her hair, shivering again at the enclosing, drowning terror that had stolen any desire for sleep. 

She hushed him as if he were the same boy she'd comforted the day they met, just pulled from the wreck and barren stretch of sea. She rubbed his back slowly while he gathered himself together. "He's at peace now, love," she whispered. "You stopped it. You ended it. The curse is over."

"It's not enough. It'll never be enough."

Elizabeth hugged him as he clung to her, finally grieving as he hadn't let himself for over eight years. There had to be some comfort for this, but the curse of the Black Pearl left almost no room for consolation. Then a thought occurred to her; an image from their fight with the pirates. Chains and bones and moonlight... and how even the deepest waters were clear when the light was right.

"Oh!" 

"What?" Will pulled back to look at her. "Elizabeth? You have the oddest expression on your face... what is it?"

"The moonlight."

"What about it?"

"I don't-- this might not be the truth. He might have got it wrong. Perhaps I shouldn't say--" At the pain in Will's eyes she relented, hoping she was saying the right thing, fearing that it wasn't. "In the moonlight, they were all returned to their true appearances, correct?"

"Of course."

"Light reaches down even to the deepest part of the oceans. Water lets it shine through, even in the farthest reaches. Jack said so, when we were on the rum runner's island. If the moonlight found him, and it touched your father, and he was reduced to a skeleton, then-- don't you see?"

"He could have slipped the chains." Will's stunned eyes met hers, and for the first time she felt the tension in his shoulders subside. Even if it weren't true, even if it was another one of Jack's tales, it was worth it to break the misery that had him in its grasp. "He could have walked to shore, as they did. A hundred miles or a thousand, he had years to do it in, he could have made it...." His voice trailed off, and then he sighed. "And never dared show his face in the Caribbean, for fear of the Black Pearl and sixty men who'd send him back to the bottom of the ocean again."

"It could have happened. He didn't have to die when the curse was ended. He could be out there, somewhere, under a different name, hiding. Alive, now. Free."

He looked at her so hard and so long that she squirmed uncomfortably. "I'm sorry, Will, I didn't mean for the thought of it to hurt you more--"

"You haven't," he said, pressing a finger to her lips to stop her apologies. He closed his eyes and drew her to his chest again. "I don't think it really happened that way," he whispered softly. "I think he's dead, Elizabeth." His voice dropped even lower. "But it's a better dream than mine. I think I'll keep it."

Long minutes passed, and she finally turned him away from the window gently, leading him by the hand. "Come back to bed, love. I can't give you the final truth. But there'll be no more nightmares tonight, I promise."


	3. Full Fathom Five Variant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Full fathom five thy father lies;_  
>  Of his bones are coral made;  
> Those are pearls that were his eyes:  
> Nothing of him that doth fade  
> But doth suffer a sea-change  
> Into something rich and strange. - The Tempest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the Horsechicks for reading and liking, Perri for the beta. I own nothing, PG-13 only for creepiness. Inspired by Inlovewithnight's challenge from World Stage Fic. 
> 
> Originally written in August 2005.

_"Full fathom five thy father lies;_  
Of his bones are coral made;  
Those are pearls that were his eyes:  
Nothing of him that doth fade  
But doth suffer a sea-change  
Into something rich and strange." - (The Tempest)

Chains were shed along with sanity, a long time ago.

He wandered in the abyss, noticing the cold every once in a while as something that would have hurt if he could feel it. He didn't remember why there was no true pain, was simply distantly grateful for the lack, here in Hell.

Hell was frost on the ground, and loneliness, and darkness. Occasionally demons would pass by, tiny imps glowing with their own fire, illuminating the emptiness that surrounded him. That constant sense of pressure, the absence of air-- how else would Hell feel, other than this? Absence of God, wasn't that Hell enough? Absence of everything, though, that was clever. Whoever dreamed of fire for damnation was a fool. Fire was life, and food, and a gathering place for other souls, and here there was no one, no thing, no place.

He didn't remember his sin, but knew it was betrayal. Only traitors were condemned to the icy wastes, and that felt-- right. He betrayed someone, or some thing, and deserved this isolation. He kept expecting others to join him, knew the sin was not solely his own, but p'rhaps they were wandering in their own pits of despair, and even the solace of shared damnation was denied them.

Dark.

Cold.

Alone.

(Occasionally, a name would float up from the depths. _Will,_ his mind said. _Jack._ And once, _Annie?_ But the names sank so fast he couldn't hold them, souls lost like his mind.)

One endless moment later he started walking, just to give himself a purpose. A dream in Hell, of reaching a destination. A horizon? An ending? He didn't know. But whenever he could, he walked in the dark. Stumbling, swimming, pain that was not-pain, chill beyond freezing that he couldn't feel, hunger that had nothing to feed on. Thirst quenched every moment, never fulfilled.

It became easier, after an indescribable length of time. He barely admitted it to himself. One step, another, one step, another; a rhythm that made the walking bearable. If it was easier, and Someone noticed him noticing that, it could not last.

_  
O my Lord, I am heartily sorry..._

Could you, was it possible... to leave Hell? If one was desperately, honestly sorry? But no, repentance wasn't enough. Not for the damned.

_  
All things are possible with God, my child._

Whose voice was that? How was he hearing that?

An image floated before him, of a man dressed in the frock-coat of a priest, holding a Bible, pious and prim. But the eyes were neither forgiving nor condemning-- they were wicked, lined with kohl, and those beads in his hair didn't come from a Rosary. After unending dark, it made no sense that he'd finally see someone in this shadowed place.  
 __  
Pastor? Was this a demon, come to torture him? Or just another damned soul?

_Tell you what, mate, you tell me your name, and I'll tell you if I'm a priest._

That voice never belonged to priest or minister. That voice belonged to dreams of ale and women and golden treasure, that much was sure. Much more likely 'twas a demon, disturbing what little peace he had.

The phantasm flickered again, and now a seaman stood before him, boots and sword, rings and hat, and a grin as wide and delighted as the Devil himself.

_I resent that. Ol' Scratch never bought me, tho' mebbe God never saved me. Still, I've always thought I'd like the old bastard, though I've no wish to be his minion._

Then why are you here?

_'Tis an escape, m'boy. Follow the leader, and we'll slip out, easy-peasy, one-two-three. There's no guards at the gates, so no one will even see._

It couldn't be that simple. He was damned.

The image sighed in frustration. _Look, if you can walk out of Hell, are you truly damned?_

He stared at the demon/dream/man in front of him, and wished for a clearer answer. Weren't you supposed to accept your punishment, if you were damned? Weren't you only s'posed to be sorry, and endure what came?  
  
 _That's never been our way. Who says you deserve this? D'you even remember why you're here?_  
  
No. He didn't remember.  
 __  
 _So what have you got to lose?_  
  
Slowly, he took a step toward the apparition, who about-faced and began to stagger forward. It was a drunken swagger, a gait for strolling on a deck--

(And suddenly he remembered being on a ship, and chains, and the shouts and catcalls of those who betrayed him, and it made him speed up his pace.)

\--and it seemed, almost, as if... it was getting lighter.

Impossible. There was never any light in Hell.

But he was almost able to see now; sand beneath his feet, a demon (an eel?) swimming by. Far, far about him, there was light. Weak, and shimmering, but still.... Let the demons at the gates be away from their post. Let the Devil be busy in China, or Malay, or in Russia somewhere. Let no one notice ol' Bill Turner--

"Bill." Bubbles left his mouth, and he squinted upward, sure that wasn't supposed to happen and knowing his voice didn't sound right.  
  
 _What's that you say?_

_**My name's Bill. Bill Turner. I think I have a son named Will and a wife named Annie, and I b'lieve I used to be a sailor.** _

_Pleased ta meetcha, mate. I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. C'mon, we've only a hundred miles or so to the edge of the world._

When he finally stood above the water, breathing (breathing!), still hungry, still thirsty, but able to see.... oh, God, there was light and white sand and palm trees. 

It might as well have been Heaven.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Please keep in mind that my knowledge of voodoo, vodou, or vodoun begins and ends with the internet, some library research, and the _Pirates of the Caribbean_ movies. It's a fascinating religion, but I can't pretend any expertise. Apologies to anyone I have offended with this tall tale, and remember
> 
> 2) Jack lies. A lot. This story is not canon-compliant past the first movie, and even then is unreliable. And
> 
> 3) Anything you hear in a bar should be taken with a shot of tequila and a pinch of salt.
> 
> 4) Chapter 2 owes its inception to Dee, who confirmed my horrified reaction *after* I watched the first movie...
> 
> 5) and chapter 3 took two years to surface from my brain, along with Bill.


End file.
